less insight than Jefferson would have had no difficulty in perceiving that Hamilton and his friends were not in sympathy with these ideas.  They hoped for the establishment of a republic, but they desired for it a highly energetic and centralized government not devoid of aristocratic tendencies.  This fundamental difference of opinion, increased as it was by personal jealousies, soon put Jefferson, therefore, into an attitude of hostility to the men who were then guiding the policy of the government.  The new administration had been so successful that there was at first practically no party of opposition, and the task before Jefferson involved the creation of a party, the formulation of principles, and the definition of issues, with appropriate shibboleths for popular consumption.  Jefferson knew that Hamilton and all who fought with him were as sincerely in favor of a republic as he himself was; but his unerring genius in political management told him that he could never raise a party or make a party-cry out of the statement that, while he favored a democratic republic, the men to whom he was opposed preferred one of a more aristocratic caste.  It was necessary to have something much more highly seasoned than this.  So he took the ground that his opponents were monarchists, bent on establishing a monarchy in this country, and were backed by a “corrupt squadron” in Congress in the pay of the Treasury.  This was of course utter nonsense, but it served its purpose admirably.  Jefferson, indeed, shouted these cries so much that he almost came to believe in them himself, and sympathetic writers to this day repeat them as if they had reality instead of having been mere noise to frighten the unwary.  The prime object of it all was to make the great leaders odious by connecting them in the popular mind with the royal government that had been overthrown.

Jefferson’s first move was a covert one.  In the spring of 1791 he received Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man,” and straightway sent the pamphlet to the printer with a note of approbation reflecting upon John Adams.  The pamphlet promptly appeared in a reprint with the note prefixed.  It made much stir, and the published approval of the Secretary of State excited a great deal of criticism, much of which was very hostile.  Jefferson thereupon expressed extreme surprise that his note had been printed, and on the plea of explaining the matter wrote to Washington a letter, in which he declared that his friend Mr. Adams, for whom he had a most cordial esteem, was an apostate to hereditary monarchy and nobility.  He further described his old friend as a political heretic and as the bellwether Davila, upon whom and whose writings Mr. Adams had recently been publishing some discourses.  It is but fair to say that no more ingenious attack on the Vice-President could have been made, but the purpose of it was simply to arrest the public attention for the real struggle which was to follow.